Optimization of the first wall helium cooling system of the European DCLL using CFD approach

Dual Coolant Lithium Lead (DCLL) is one of the four breeding blanket concepts being developed within the EUROfusion project as candidates for the European DEMO. One of the most challenging components of the breeding blanket in terms of thermal-hydraulic is the first wall. In order to handle the high thermal loads that the DCLL first wall will be facing, a proper design of the helium cooling system is crucial. The present work deals with the evaluation of the first wall cooling ability under DEMO conditions and with the optimization of geometric and operational parameters of the cooling system composed of helium channels. For this purpose, a sensitivity study to evaluate dependence between the geometric and the operational parameters was performed. All studies were performed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach. The preparation process of the CFD analyses including geometric parametrization of a computational mesh is also described.